A Chat With Chang - Part Two
If you have missed A Chat With Chang - Part One, you can read it here.
Q: The 1989 French Open, what was that like for you at such a young age?
Michael: Well, for me, being 17 years old, I think that to some degree to be on tour was relatively new, it was my sophomore year on tour, and even the French Open in ’89 was very much a dream, a fairytale tournament. But at the same time, because you’re so young you don’t really realise what’s actually taking place over that fortnight in Paris.
And it wasn’t until I had some time to reflect, and obviously the situation in Tiananmen Square was going on - the crackdown happened on the middle Sunday of the French Open that year - all of a sudden you’re trying to put all of these pieces together and you start to realise, first off, you’re not expected to win and certainly I didn’t expect to win. But God had a greater plan in that and I often tell people that it’s a tournament that was kind of meant to be just to put a smile on Chinese people’s faces all around the world during a time when there wasn’t a whole lot to smile about. I drew a lot of courage from watching the events unfold on tv and it made going out there and fighting for a tennis match seem like nothing when they’re out there fighting for their freedom and their democracy. So since that time I’ve always had a very special heart for China and I still do to this day.
Q: And of course you did have to fight in that tournament. Some of the situations you had to extricate yourself from, particularly against Lendl; that match remains in so many people’s mind. How do you look back on taking on one of the great clay court players and finding a way to win?
Michael: Well, I think that Ivan is such a champion and I have nothing but the utmost respect for him and I probably actually had more respect for him after the French Open. After our match I didn’t see him until Wimbledon a couple of weeks later in London and we saw each and the first thing he did was walk straight up to me, shook my hand and said ‘Michael, congratulations, that was a great effort there at the French’. That’s not an easy thing to do for someone who’s ranked number one in the world and a three-time French Open Champion, to lose to a 17 year-old kid under those circumstances is not easy, much less to be able to come up there and put aside his own pride and say ‘look, that was a great effort’. That shows me that he’s a gentleman off the court and a warrior on the court.
Everyone knows that he’s a warrior and champion and a fighter on the court but I think people don’t see that other side of Ivan. But for me it was an honour to play against him and something that in many ways will go down as a great part of the testament of my career. Without that match or without the French Open in ’89 it’s a whole new ball game.